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Teamwork a must when there is no room for errors

Public failure is a daily risk for Edwin Bolwerk, programme manager at Vanderlande Industries, a global industrial automation company based in the Netherlands. He heads an eight-year initiative, to be completed in 2013, to upgrade the luggage handling system at Amsterdam Airport. Because the project is taking place within the fully functioning airport terminal, Mr Bolwerk has deliverables that need to be achieved daily before the airport opens – and he cannot make a mistake.

In the current installation phase, his IT team of 200 people, often works all night to install and test luggage handling applications that must be fully operational by 6 am. “Many days it is like another handover to the client,” Mr Bolwerk says. “And if even one system is not working, we are on the spot to fix it.”

Along with having no room for error, Mr Bolwerk must juggle the human resources issues that come with having teams work at night, and the budgetary impact of additional overtime costs. He also must ensure the teams he assembles have the experience and skills to get the job done in the time allotted – and are willing to acknowledge problems when they arise, instead of trying to cover them up.

As a result, Mr Bolwerk dismisses team members who do not communicate effectively or support each other. “You need a critical mass of expertise on your team, and they need to help each other,” he says. “You cannot do this work in isolation.”

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